


The first ride is always a rough one

by bees_stories



Category: Torchwood
Genre: IN SPACE, M/M, Nausea, Sick Ianto Jones, hurt comfort, jack knows best, post Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 03:17:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4903498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bees_stories/pseuds/bees_stories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Ianto have left Earth to go travelling. Ianto's first time being transmat-beamed across space makes him want to stick to hitching lifts on freighters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The first ride is always a rough one

* * *

"Oh ... god." Ianto wobbled on legs that felt like they were made of jelly. His head swam, which wasn't something that made his stomach at all happy, and his breakfast threatened to make a return appearance. He quickly shut his eyes against the topsy turvy world and wished for a quick and painless death.

"Easy there, tiger." Jack stepped off the adjacent transmat pad and moved behind Ianto to hold him steady. "The first ride is always a rough one." 

Ianto let Jack guide him off the platform. He couldn't orient himself. Up was down and down was up, and then everything slid sideways as he was held by the shoulders and made to sit. He opened his eyes for a moment and immediately regretted his decision.

"Put your head between your knees." 

Once again it was Jack who actually accomplished the action, gently pressing down on the back of Ianto's skull until his forehead rested against the coolish patches of plastic-like fabric that reinforced the knees of his coveralls. Jack raised Ianto's hand, from where it hung limply next to his leg, took it in his, and applied pressure to the pulse point at the wrist, while using his other palm to rub soothing circles over Ianto's back. 

"Just keep your eyes closed and breathe slowly. It might be hard to believe, but it's not your body protesting being torn apart and shoved together again," Jack said as if he wasn't quite sure he believed the explanation himself. "It's your brain refusing to believe that it's _actually_ happened." 

Ianto opened his eyes and got a defocused view of Jack's knees. He shut them quickly again and went back to concentrating on his breathing. 

_In: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten._

_Out: ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one._

_In: un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, saith, wyth, naw, deg._

_Out: deg, naw, wyth, saith, chwech, pump, pedwar, tri, dau, un._

_In:unu, du, tri, kvar, kvin, ses, sep, ok, naŭ, dek._

_Out: dek, naŭ, ok, sep, ses, kvin, kvar, tri, du, unu._

As Ianto continued to count from one to ten in various languages, Jack kept up the pressure on his wrist. It helped. Slowly, his head cleared, and his sense of balance seemed to reassert itself. Even better, his stomach decided against spilling its contents over the floor. By degrees, the bolus of sick descended back down his oesophagus, until it settled uneasily into his midsection. 

When he reached One in Sesmet, the official language of Mentat Prime, the planet to which they had just been so uncomfortably transported, Ianto tentatively opened his eyes again. This time Jack's knees were in focus.

Hesitantly, he straightened, a few degrees at a time, until he was sitting upright, and took in their surroundings. Ianto frowned. He had expected something more public. After all, the station on Bartini, where their last job had taken them, had been heaving with travellers destined for planets and space stations all over the sector. Instead, they were in a quiet room, all to themselves. There wasn't even a platform operator standing over them, impatiently tapping a foot because of their time-wasting, or shaking his or her head sympathetically at an obvious transmat greenhorn. 

"I don't understand." Ianto let his faltering gaze travel around the pristine white room. "Shouldn't there be – " He trailed off as a secondary wave of nausea, less acute, but still uncomfortable, rode over his body. He swallowed hard, pre-emptively, against a throat full of bile, but the feeling passed quickly, and his head and stomach both quieted. 

Jack pulled an uncomfortable face. It was the sort of expression that Ianto interpreted as Jack having done something that he knew wasn't going to go over especially well, but he had decided to damn the consequences. 

"Jack?" 

Ianto considered the various reasons his partner might have that particular expression, and they all came down to money, something that, due to their itinerant lifestyle, was often in short supply. "How much? For this, I mean?"

The uncomfortable expression became a guilty one. And then Jack's shoulders rose and fell, and he smiled as if it wasn't a big deal, which probably meant that in fact it was. "It didn't cost anything. Not really."

Ianto's stomach sank, but it had nothing to do with transmat sickness. Barter was a way of life, but it often had unforeseen consequences. "You traded our passage, and this extra accommodation, for a favour." 

Jack raised his hand and held his index finger and thumb an inch apart. "Just a tiny one."

Ianto pushed a palm over his face. He considered what his recovery would have been like if they hadn't had the time to themselves. Spaceports were busy places, full of hurried people. In normal circumstances, he would have been hustled off the platform to make room for some other incoming traveller. He probably would have been messily sick, embarrassing himself in front of strangers. And, because they were meant to go straight from the spaceport to meet with their contact for the job he had lined up, he would have been at a disadvantage if he'd tried to negotiate the final terms of their bargain with a spinning head and unruly stomach. 

"Am I going to hate it?" There were times Jack got them into things that pushed Ianto's comfort zone, and occasionally, went right over the line. The time they'd played escort to an amorous ten-legged Barsoovian ambassador, whose liberties they weren't allowed to refuse sprang to mind, and Ianto felt his jaw tense as he waited for Jack to answer.

Jack's shoulders rose and fell as he pressed his lips together and cocked his head to one side. "Maybe?" he replied hesitantly. 

"Is it illegal?" One of the first lessons Ianto had learnt when they embarked upon their tour of time and space was that legality was relative, and that in the wider galaxy, ethics weren't quite so black and white. In fact, they were more like a rainbow coloured in shades of grey.

Jack's shoulders rose and fell again."Depends on who you ask."

Ianto blew out a breath. He felt much stronger. Up and down had resumed their proper places, and his head, at least for the time being, felt like it was firmly re-attached to his shoulders. He clambered to his feet and offered Jack his hand, ignoring the mischievous glint he saw in his partner's eyes. 

Whatever Jack had got them into, he, at least, thought it was going to be fun.

end


End file.
